Considering how critical this current Los Angeles Lakers road trip is—it's the annual "Grammy Trip," the one whose importance was laid out in detail by colleague Sean Deveney last week—they can't afford to be picky about their wins.

They won't put an asterisk next to Game No. 3, and Win No. 2. Nope, not throwing this one back. In a season in which everything imaginable and a few things unimaginable have gone wrong, Sunday's 98-97 victory over the Detroit Pistons in Auburn Hills, Mich., will be very welcome.

Metta World Peace and the Lakers are driving for playoff position. (AP Photo)

It ought to be, considering the consequences of losing it. All it would have done was deflate whatever semblance of momentum the Lakers had been building over the previous week. Remember, just seven days before this Super Sunday matinee against the feeble and short-handed Pistons, the Lakers had beaten the Oklahoma City Thunder, Kobe Bryant had re-invented himself as a playmaker and Dwight Howard had figured out a new way to shoehorn himself into the picture for the better.

Things were looking up. Enough that the Lakers could start using the "P" word again, even though they were still out of playoff position in the NBA's Western Conference. All they had to do was keep this up.

They have. Sort of.

True, their first step onto the road was a bad one—a loss in Phoenix, in which Howard re-injured his shoulder. He hasn't played since, and before sitting out Sunday's game in his warm-ups, he had left the team to get plasma treatment. It didn't sound hopeful that he would be back playing right away.

Yet the Lakers have now won two straight on the trip, Friday in Minneapolis and Sunday in Detroit. Helpful.

Of course, they let huge leads get away in both games. But they held on both times—by their fingernails this time, or to be exact, the Pistons' Andre Drummond's fingernails. Drummond couldn't control an inbounds lob to the rim in the final seconds; if he had, the Pistons would have won.

Even worse for Detroit, had Will Bynum's drive with 2.7 seconds left spun around and in, instead of around and out, the situation at the end might have been different. Good for the Lakers.

Yet (once again), the Lakers wouldn't have been in that position had they not missed their last four free throws of the game, in the final 16.8 seconds. Two by Earl Clark and two by Steve Nash. Get up, walk around for a minute, clear your head, sit down again, take a deep breath, and read that again: Steve Nash missed two free throws, with the game on the line.

But the Lakers still won. Good sign.

In fact, they held on even though both Pau Gasol and Bryant heaved up two horrible jumpers in the last two minutes when the Pistons were breathing down their necks. Gasol's was a brick, Kobe's an air ball.

But in all the drama, despite the Lakers holding an 18-point third-quarter lead and a 10-point edge in the fourth, and then allowing themselves to be caught, they not only won, they never let the Pistons take the lead. And it was Bryant who put the Lakers up for good with a three-point play with 1:09 to go.

All's well that ends well. For one day, at least.

The Lakers have no choice but to find pearls amid the garbage of Sunday's adventure. They have now won two in a row on the road for the first time all season (yes, it's February, two weeks from the All-Star break). They also have won two in a row without Howard, after losing all three games the first time he hurt his shoulder last month.

They got a ton from Nash, despite the man-bites-dog aspect of his late free-throw shooting—he had missed only two the entire season until then. Otherwise, he had 11 points and 10 assists. They also got great numbers from Gasol, 23 points and 10 rebounds, although he was disturbingly spotty at the end when the game got tight.

They got neither the 30-point Kobe (18, on 8-for-20 shooting) nor the triple-double, baby-Magic Kobe (five assists, one in the second half) ... but they still won. The drive for the three-point play was good enough.

For that matter, so was the pass that might have been the best of his career, a halfcourt inbound lob to Clark with 0.4 seconds left in the first half. Technically, that eye-popping play (and Detroit's eye-rolling defensive nap during it) was the difference in the game.

They even weathered a flagrant foul (which probably wasn't really one) by Metta World Peace, that riled up an Auburn Hills crowd with long memories. In the end, it affected nothing.

If ever a shaky win deserved to be celebrated, it was this one. Other good news is still in short supply.

This was the cushiony portion of the trip. The next seven days come games in Brooklyn, Boston, Charlotte and Miami. Both Howard and Mike D'Antoni see his return from the shoulder problem as day-to-day, and the Nets game is very questionable.

This win got them back to within four games of .500, 22-26, and within 3½ games of the last West playoff berth, in 10th place.

And no matter how much they seem to testing new, inventive ways to lose, lately the Lakers are managing to win.